1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to anniversary reminder systems, and, more particularly, to a centralized system for automatically tracking multiple anniversaries.
2. Description of the Related Art
Throughout the world and in connection with many secular as well as religious traditions, a lighted candle is often associated with an anniversary or a time of remembrance, reflection or prayer. Often, the passing of an anniversary or time of remembrance results in the lighting of a candle. In some Christian faiths, votive candles may be lit to represent a time of remembrance or prayer. In Judaism, the anniversary of the death of a parent or close relative, commonly observed by burning a candle for an appropriate period of remembrance, is known as ‘Yahrzeit’.
With the advent of modern building codes and safety considerations, the lit candles have been replaced by lighting devices using safer forms of illumination such as electric light bulbs instead of candles. In some cases these lighting devices are manufactured to emulate the look and feel of the candle arrangements that are being replaced. In other instances, the lighting devices have allowed for designs that permit greater utility while providing space saving and display improvements to enhance the decorative elements. For example, electronic memorial boards have been in use for some time by congregations practicing yahrzeit to provide a central location for remembering those deceased individuals from the community in which a plaque or nameplate conveying information about each individual is affixed to the memorial board and associated with at least one light bulb that is lit during the appropriate time period of remembrance. The conventional electronic memorial boards are wired to provide electricity to a plurality of conventional electric light bulb sockets, such as, Edison threaded screw-in sockets wherein each socket may receive a like threaded light bulb that is screwed into the socket until electrical contact is made. Often these conventional systems operate to activate or deactivate a light bulb by unscrewing the bulb within the socket sufficiently so as to create an open circuit while maintaining the light bulb within the socket. Such an activation system requires that at appropriate times when a remembrance period begins or ends, such as at sun down, an operator must manually screw or unscrew light bulbs on the memorial board to honor the appropriate beginning or ending of the remembrance period of the individuals listed on the memorial board. Furthermore, for certain holidays it may be required that some or all of the lights be illuminated for a certain time period that is different from the anniversary date remembered.
It will be appreciated that in large congregations, large numbers of individuals can be displayed on one or more such memorial boards, and the task of managing the appropriate illumination of light bulbs for the individuals can be time consuming and error prone where such errors can result in the failure to illuminate the appropriate individual at the appropriate time. Compounding the problem with maintaining the appropriate illumination of lights is the life cycle of the traditional incandescent bulbs used in a conventional memorial board that can result in a loss of illumination when the end of the life cycle is reached. Unless, a bulb fails to illuminate at the time it is manually activated, there is no easy way to detect when a bulb that should be lit has reached the end of its life cycle without periodically manually checking each bulb in the one or more memorial boards. As the light bulbs are each subject to individual and manual activation, there is no easy way to quickly check whether an individual bulb has gone out and requires replacement.
Thus, the need exists for a way to improve the methods for lighting individual memorial lights and to improve the diagnostic methods to ensure individual operation of each of the lights.